“I was sixteen, you were seventeen,” I interrupted.
He sighed. “I was turning eighteen intwo days.”
“But if you wanted me for years, why didn’t you ever do anything about it?”
“I was never going to stay here, Billie. I had to leave. I couldn’t stay with my dad. And you were my best friend, more than that, I don’t even know what you were. I couldn’t…I didn’t know how to even breathe when you weren’t around.”
“Clearly you figured it out,” I countered, calling bullshit.
“And you were young.”
“I wasn’t that young.” I took another step and realized we were never going to see eye to eye on that, but I had other questions I wanted answers to. “Why didn’t you say goodbye? Why didn’t you call me or write to me?”
“I had already enlisted. You didn’t know that, but I did right after I found out about the money. At the time I told myself I didn’t say goodbye because it was better for you if I didn’t. That it would be cleaner that way. But I think the truth is, I’m not sure if I saw you again, if I would have been able to go.”
“You would have had to go.” I smiled, feeling lighter than I had in years, probably just because we were talking again. I justmissed talking to my best friend. Or maybe it was because Adam Knight just told me he’d wanted me for years and didn’t know how to breathe without me, even if it was bullshit. “It was the military, I don’t think you would have had a choice.”
Adam grinned and looked down at the ground.
“Why didn’t you return my texts or calls, or write to me? All those years.”
When he looked back up, the intensity in his stare caused my knees to go weak and all the oxygen in the room to get sucked out. “I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’m sorry."
Now I couldn’t breathe. “Why?”
“At first it was because I felt guilty. Then the longer it went, I just couldn’t. If I did, it would have been too hard to stay away.”
“I thought I scared you off because you knew I was…a virgin.”
“No.” He took another step closer to me. “No. Fuck, no. I’m sorry. It was…me. I wanted you so bad. That’s why I stopped, I had to.”
“You hurt me.” It was the biggest understatement in the world, but it was the truth. “Bad. Really, really bad. More than anyone else ever has.”Or ever could, because I’ve never loved anyone like I loved you.
“I know, I’m sorry.”
I could see the pain in his eyes. I knew I wasn’t the only one who had suffered all these years, but a few “I’m sorrys” didn’t erase everything he’d done. “It’s not enough.”
He nodded. “I know.”
Tears started to form in my eyes, so I quickly turned back to finish packing. If this heart-to-heart was going to end in bodily fluids, it was not going to be teardrops.
17
BILLIE
“Who was?”Adam asked the question so abruptly that it startled me out of my emotional spiral as I stood at my closet.
I blinked away the tears, trying to get a grip and not to let my heartbreak and need leak out everywhere.
“What?” I sniffed, buying time by twisting my hair behind my ear. I turned to face him, but he’d already closed the rest of the distance between us, rooted in my tiny bedroom, now perilously close to the edge of my open suitcase.
He angled his head, softer this time. “Who was your first?”
The air in the room thickened by the second, a dense fog of lust ate up all the oxygen. I knew I should tell him to mind his own business, that he had no right to ask—not now, not ever—but the words crumbled to dust before I could get them out.
I could have lied. Instead, I gave him the only truth I had. “Just a guy. It should have been you. I wanted it to be you.”
I half expected him to step back, hang his head, and stammer out another apology. Instead, Adam’s hand came to my cheek, fingers warm and deliberate, and he tipped my face up, so our eyes met. It was the same touch from earlier—the one that had me all but melting in the middle of the church. The same touchas that night, so long ago now, the one I’d replayed a thousand times and tried to block out a thousand more.
